TRI, TRI again and again

Just when you thought the weakening of the Toxic Release Inventory was all tied up in a pretty little contaminated bow, U.S. lawmakers are tugging at the strings. Word is that on Wednesday, a couple of reps and senators will propose legislation to undo the EPA’s decision to raise the threshold for how much pollution a polluter must pollute before it gets reported under the publicly-accessible TRI. (The threshold was raised to 2,000 pounds from 500 pounds.)

The EPA, as you may recall, was chastened by the Government Accountability Office last week for not following its own protocols for changing the program, thereby failing to figure out what kind of effect the changes could have. Back-of-the-envelope tabulations left the GAO concluding thousands of polluters could duck the detailed public scrutiny.

Then there’s this other little change-up of which I was unaware. On Jan. 26, President Bush issued an executive order titled “Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management.” Sounds suspicious, right? The order quietly axes other executive orders, including one from Bill Clinton from 2000 that had formally established the requirement that federal facilities report to TRI.

A prime beneficiary of the change? The U.S. Defense Department! See the National Environmental Trust analysis here.